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Feb. 23, 2007
"Springtime" for Vancouver
Mel Brooks' hugely popular musical is coming to town.
KATHARINE HAMER EDITOR
He's the nice Jewish boy who'll be appearing on stage at the Centre
in Vancouver for Performing Arts next week – wearing a crown
and a dress.
Former college football player Brad Nacht will perform as the supremely
camp Roger De Bris – "the worst theatre director in New
York" – in the Vancouver run of Mel Brooks' musical The
Producers.
In an e-mail interview with the Independent, Nacht said that
though Brooks' comedy was funny "regardless of who you are,"
he feels "a great sense of pride" in playing a character
based on Jewish humor.
"There are not many shows," he pointed out, "with
a character named after a circumcision."
Nacht is one of several young performers following in the footsteps
of actors like Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, who starred in
the lead roles of Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom in Brooks' 2001 Broadway
launch of the show (which has since gone on to win a record number
of Tony Awards.)
It's a tough act to follow, Nacht admitted, but "I think it
was harder for Nathan and Matthew to follow in the footsteps of
Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder [who starred in the 1968 movie version
of The Producers]. When you come into something that has
been so successful in the past, there is a part of you that wants
to recreate the role as best as you can. The show won 12 Tony Awards.
You'd be crazy not to steal something. But the roles in this show
are so specific, it will be difficult for anyone in the future not
to draw comparisons."
The musical tells the story of down-and-out Broadway producer Bialystock
(played in the touring version of the show by Jason Simon) and mousy
accountant Bloom (Austin Owen) who, together, cook up a money-making
scheme based on a show deliberately designed to flop – by hiring
the worst actors and the worst director in town to stage the worst
play ever written.
That play turns out to be Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp with
Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden, starring Roger De Bris (as Hitler)
and a Swedish bombshell named Ulla.
The multiple role-playing puts Nacht front and centre for much of
the show. By act two, "I have a 30-minute period where I only
leave the stage to change costumes," he said.
He had a lot of preparation time, coming from a theatrical background.
Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Bethesda, Md., Nacht didn't
get seriously into theatre until his second year of university –
although he had performed in high school plays. But his father was
president of the local community theatre and his mother, who studied
opera, still works in theatre today.
Even if he weren't on stage, Nacht said he'd still be putting on
some kind of a show: "I'd like to think I'd be working on the
local news – as a newscaster or somewhere in television production."
But it wouldn't be quite the same. "I really like the fact
that the only other place in the world that you can see this show
is on Broadway," he said. "It feels like every night,
we are doing something that, besides the people in the audience,
there are only about 1,000 other people in the world that are experiencing
what we are!"
The Producers runs Feb. 27-March 4 at the Centre. For tickets,
call 604-280-4444. For more information, visit www.producersontour.com.
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